Here Is Why Conservatives Should Worry About Facebook's Newly Published Guidelines
Conservatives have good reason to be worried about Facebook. Newly published information about the site’s Community Standards, which guide what content is allowed and what is prohibited, shows it has vague restrictions on what it deems to be hate speech and hate organizations. For instance, vocalizing not liking a particular protected group, according to Facebook, falls under the category of hate speech.
This transparency effort follows in the wake of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on Capitol Hill. Facebook released an in-depth enforcement guide to the kinds of content that violate its Community Standards. The Community Standards are broken out into different sections: “Violence and Criminal Behavior,” “Safety,” “Objectionable Content,” “Integrity and Authenticity,” “Respecting Intellectual Property,” and “Content-Related Requests.” Each section has its own rules and regulations for what material is not tolerated on Facebook.
The most worrisome for conservatives is the section devoted to hate speech. Facebook says it defines hate speech “as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease.” Facebook also adds that it “provide[s] some protections for immigration status.”
The site defined three tiers of hate speech. The “Tier 1” level of hate speech is an attack on people by calling them subhuman, or comparing them to animals or diseases:
Tier 1 attacks, which target a person or group of people who share one of the above-listed characteristics or immigration status (including all subsets except those described as having carried out violent crimes or sexual offenses), where attack is defined as
Any violent speech or support for death/disease/harm
Dehumanizing speech including (but not limited to)
Reference or comparison to filth, bacteria, disease, or feces
Reference or comparison to animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior
Reference or comparison to subhumanity
Mocking the concept, events or victims of hate crimes even if no real person is depicted in an image
Designated dehumanizing comparisons in both written and visual form
The “Tier 2” of hate speech includes merely vocalizing a dislike of a certain group of people who are given protected status by Facebook. Phrases such as “free rider,” “low IQ,” and “gross” are specifically mentioned by Facebook as items that would violate the site’s hate speech rules:
Tier 2 attacks, which target a person or group of people who share any of the above-listed characteristics, where attack is defined as
Statements of inferiority implying a person's or a group's physical, mental, or moral deficiency
Physical (including but not limited to “deformed,” “undeveloped,” “hideous,” “ugly”)
Mental (including but not limited to “retarded,” “cretin,” “low IQ,” “stupid,” “idiot”)
Moral (including but not limited to “slutty,” “fraud,” “cheap,” “free riders”)
Expressions of contempt, including (but not limited to)
"I hate"
"I don't like"
"X are the worst"
Expressions of disgust, including (but not limited to)
It is possible that certain conservative positions, such as ones related to gay marriage or illegal immigration, are suppressed due to these particular hate speech guidelines. For instance, saying you “think illegal immigrants are free-riders” or believe “being gay is gross,” could potentially be flagged by Facebook as hate speech and result in the material being taken down since they attack traits of what are considered protected groups.
If those comments and thousands of others produced by individuals or organizations qualify as hate speech, then do those authors then get banned as well?
Tier 3 attacks, meanwhile, are calls for segregation or exclusion (along with slurs). Facebook specifically mentions the topic of immigration here, writing, “We do allow criticism of immigration policies and arguments for restricting those policies.” However, given how this appears under Facebook’s policy against segregation and exclusion, it is implies conservative immigration policies are considered segregationist or exclusionist and can cause certain positions to run its problems.
In addition to banning hate speech, Facebook also has a section under banning “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” that claims, along with terrorist groups, hate organizations and their leaders are not welcome on the site:
Hate organizations and their leaders and prominent members
Given the subjective nature of what is considered a hate organization, Facebook’s unclear guidelines on how it will determine what is considered a hate group raise significant questions. Anti-”hate” organizations, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, have targeted conservatives for their beliefs. The news post about the published guidelines explains that, in terms of hate speech, Facebook has worked with Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor who created what is called the Free Speech Debate.
Facebook’s Community Standards page also include a section on the topic of “false news.” According to Facebook, the site does not take down fake news stories, but tries to curb how they’re shared on the site:
We are working to build a more informed community and reduce the spread of false news in a number of different ways, namely by
Disrupting economic incentives for people, Pages, and domains that propagate misinformation
Using various signals, including feedback from our community, to inform a machine learning model that predicts which stories may be false
Reducing the distribution of content rated as false by independent third-party fact-checkers
Empowering people to decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share by informing them with more context and promoting news literacy
Collaborating with academics and other organizations to help solve this challenging issue
Given how the Facebook’s efforts to stem fake news have led to satirical Christian sites being flagged, and Facebook’s lack of transparency when it comes to the “academics and other organizations” who will be partnering with Facebook, conservatives should be wary of what Facebook deems “false news.”
There are some reasons to rejoice over the new Facebook guidelines, however. In the press release announcing the publication of the internal guidelines, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Policy Management announced the ability to appeal individual posts that have been flagged for deletion:
We know we need to do more. That’s why, over the coming year, we are going to build out the ability for people to appeal our decisions. As a first step, we are launching appeals for posts that were removed for nudity / sexual activity, hate speech or graphic violence.
Here’s how it works:
If your photo, video or post has been removed because we found that it violates our Community Standards, you will be notified, and given the option to request additional review.
This will lead to a review by our team (always by a person), typically within 24 hours.
If we’ve made a mistake, we will notify you, and your post, photo or video will be restored.
We are working to extend this process further, by supporting more violation types, giving people the opportunity to provide more context that could help us make the right decision, and making appeals available not just for content that was taken down, but also for content that was reported and left up. We believe giving people a voice in the process is another essential component of building a fair system.
This means if a conservative poster — or any poster — believes that their content was wrongfully deleted by Facebook, they will be allowed to get a second chance to have their content reviewed by a real person.
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